The Jazz Age and the Theme of Innocence in "The Great Gatsby"

Summary: F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" is essentially a book about the end of innocence. An essay examining whether the book the Great Gatsby is a story about the end of innocence in 1920s America. The elite's lifestyle of decadance is ended by the harsh economic realities that followed.

`The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald has many themes, such as the end of the American Dream, and one of these themes is the end of innocence in the period that the book was set in, the Jazz Age. Before I look at the importance of innocence in the book I must first look at the details of the Jazz Age and what sort of influence it had on the general public.

The Jazz Age was literally when Jazz music really came into its own and became the defining music of the people. The music played an important role in everybody's lives and the level of playing at the time surpassed in quality any other period in history, especially the compositions of Duke Ellington. But to bring the music closer to the types of people that are mostly portrayed in the book, young, rich and white people...